Saturday, September 15, 2007

Orange Crate Art is three years old today. If the average blog life-span is indeed three months, Orange Crate Art is, in human terms, some 900 years old. Which raises troubling questions as to who's been doing all this writing.

The deepest and most unpredictable rewards of keeping this blog have come in the form of comments and e-mails. The responses to posts about my friend Aldo Carrasco and my professor Jim Doyle have shown me the ways in which the Internet can bring people together, not only across space but also across time. Back in my days as a full-time Luddite, I never imagined that wonderful possibility.

Thanks (again, again) to Rachel, who thought "Orange Crate Art" would make a good name, to Rachel and Ben for showing me that I could learn a little HTML, to Elaine, my sounding board for much of what's here, and to everyone who's read (and perhaps commented). And thanks always to Van Dyke Parks, musician and mensch, who welcomed my use of his title with generous good wishes. (If you've never heard "Orange Crate Art," you can find it here and here.)

comments: 6

stefan
said...

Bon Anniversaire, Michael and Orange Crate Art, and thanks for building such a special place on the web. After all, where else can one read dispatches from the dowdy world, overhear snippets of quirky conversation (like this one from Madison, by a skateboarder descending State St. on his cell phone: “thank God I read Machiavelli !”) or find funny and helpful e-mail etiquette? Where else does Proust exist along side vegan recipes? Where else does a reader find advertising copy treated with the same curiosity and enthusiasm as a Duke Ellington recording? There’s something at OCA for everyone: computer geeks, music geeks, book lovers and player haters, film folks and office supply fetishists, enthusiasts and debunkers of all sorts. The list goes on and on, and so, I hope, does Orange Crate Art. Many happy returns!

“Orange Crate Art” is a song by Van Dyke Parks and the title of a 1995 album by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. “Orange Crate Art” is for me one of the great American songs: “Orange crate art was a place to start.”

Don’t look for premiums orcoupons, as the cost ofthe thoughts blended inORANGE CRATE ART pro-hibits the use of them.